The random musings of an Englishman on just about anything really. Not very helpful this is it? Ah well! Tough I don't want to cramp my style...

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Cats

I like cats. I know we're all supposed to be split into cat people and dog people - I like them both but I like cats more than dogs now - they're just not so needy and demanding. And they crap in someone else's garden! Always a plus!

And I don't like little scrawny creatures. I mean I really don't like them - verging on the phobic. Little rib cages. Scrabbling feet. Naked tails. Euw! I don't like them at all. I also don't like creatures bred into deformity. You know the kind of thing...all dogs are wolves, right? But bulldogs can't give birth without caesarian section. Yuk! Got the picture?

Anyway my younger daughter (not the evil one) wanted a fluffy thing to hug and love and stroke and keep for her birthday. Hamsters are right out and I really couldn't face a house-rabbit, so I got her a kitten. My elder son thinks the husbandry of beasts of any sort in the house is deeply medieval - however you can't please all the children all the time.

Now given I don't care for little scrabbly things, I researched big cats. Big BIG cats. By all accounts there's enough Alien Big Cats (ABCs) at large in this country to provide breeding populations courtesy of the Dangerous Wild Animals Act of 1976, at which point anyone with an exotic beast let it go. Skummy off the 5 Live Message Boards claims (repeatedly) to have seen one. However...

The lynx was once indiginous to the British Isles but sadly the native lynx became extinct 2000 years ago. We still have Scottish Wild cat Felis Sylvestris Grampia and very handsome he is too. Even if I could find one, I didn't think he'd be so cool as a pet. So I looked to America and found the Maine Coon.

Gorgeous creatures. Big old boys. They are wild in Maine and the Eastern seaboard and hugely growing in popularity in this country. Some say they are an inter-mingling of the Norweigan forest cat and a native wild cat. No-one really knows but they are serious snow cats with hairy feet, big paws and a mane to die for!

Our cat is only a kitten but this is his brother against a wine bottle for scale.When that leaps through the bedroom window in the middle of the night and lands on your chest - I tell you, you know about it! And I'm only talking about his kid brother!